If you are wondering why this might be the case:
https://www.endsreport.com/article/...ities-environment-risk-ea-chair-tells-eustice
From the article written in June this year, partly quoting a letter from Emma Howard-Boyd who is Chair of the EA:
"Since 2010, funding for the EA’s work has been cut by nearly two-thirds, from £120m to the latest settlement of £43m plus £5m for new activity.
Howard Boyd wrote: “This money has to fund all of our environmental work: our monitoring of air and water quality, enforcement of the regulations that protect the environment, prosecutions, closing down illegal waste sites and tackling waste criminals … responding to environmental incidents.
“Over the last few years the drop in grant has forced us to reduce or stop work it used to fund, with real-world impacts (e.g. on our ability to protect water quality) for which we and the government are now facing mounting criticism.”
So when we talk about "failures of a regulator", just remember who it is who holds the purse strings and prevents them from doing a proper job.
I have no doubt that
@RyanioBirdio's family member will atest to how hard/impossible their job has become over that time....